photo.jpg

# Modernism Period ## Late 19th Century - Mid 20th Century * Modernism marked the late 19th and mid 20th centuries. By the 1960s, modernism had become a dominant idea of art, and developed as a result of sociological changes. * This period includes the growing influence of science, rapid industria...

# Modernism Period ## Late 19th Century - Mid 20th Century * Modernism marked the late 19th and mid 20th centuries. By the 1960s, modernism had become a dominant idea of art, and developed as a result of sociological changes. * This period includes the growing influence of science, rapid industrialization, and is driven by social and political agendas. But new technologies didn't only change the ways of manufacturing. At the time, they also made writers reconsider their attitudes toward the established norms of the craft - an act of rebellion. * Out of this cultural shift, one of the most compelling literary movements was born. ## Transformative Movement * Modernism is a transformative movement in arts, philosophy, and cinema, but most especially in literature. * It sparked a creative revolution, breathing into a new generation of storytelling such as: * Futurism * Imagism * Dadaism * Surrealism * Cubism * Expressionism * Vorticism ## The Main Genres are: ### Novels * ***The Great Gatsby*** by F. Scott Fitzgerald ### Poems * **Harlem** by Langston Hughes ## Characteristics of Modernism The stylistic characteristics include: * Individualism * Symbolism * Innovation * Experimentation * Absurdity * Ambiguity * Abstraction * Stream of consciousness * Formalism. Alienation is a predominant mood in modernist works of art; irony is often also a large part. ## Common Themes of Modernism * Influenced by Prohibition and the Great Depression; fueled by a sense of disillusionment and loss; * Violence, historical discontinuity, unavoidable change, urbanization, alienation, and existentialism. ## Prominent Modernist Authors Furthermore, this period consists of many prominent modernist and influential authors, and they are: * Ezra Pound * Zora Neale Hurston * F. Scott Fitzgerald * William Faulkner * T.S. Eliot * James Joyce * Virginia Woolf * E.E. Cummings "Love, yes. Word known to all men," Stephen said from the iconic text of the Irish writer James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922, which was a landmark event in the development of Modernist literature.